When the PGA of America announced On Tuesday it would allow distance measuring devices at its major championships, including this year’s PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. One of the main tenets of the decision was that it would help speed up play.
“We are always interested in methods that can improve the flow of play at our championships,” said PGA of America President Jim Richerson.
PGA Tour rounds (DMDs are still not allowed on tour outside of practice rounds) regularly span five hours north and can be closer to six hours in majors. Pace of play has also been a topic on tour for decades. It remains to be seen, however, whether using rangefinders actually results in faster gameplay.
This much is obvious: if you put a dozen shopping carts in a room, you’ll probably have a dozen different opinions. However, when it comes to the impact the devices will have on speeding up the game, almost all of them told Golf Digest that they will have little to no impact on speeding things up.
“Every year there’s maybe one or two times where I wish I had one, and that’s just when (my player) is so far offline,” Webb Simpson caddy Paul Tesori said. “Otherwise, I’ll still have to have the front number, the carry number, how many (yards) left or right and the yards behind the pin. The last number we get is the pin, and what happens if the rangefinder is more than a yard away? Then we have to redo all the other numbers to match what we’re trying to do with the shot.
“I would say we try to aim for a pin less than 5 percent of the time. And off the tee, I always need to go out, carry numbers and lines above the trees.”
Joe Skovron, Rickie Fowler’s caddy, added: “If I pulled a number, I would triple check it and still have to go to my yardage book and get a front or cover number.” »
Looper-turned-Golf Channel/NBC reporter John Wood agreed, opining on Twitter that play would come to a screeching halt as a player and his caddy tried to figure out why there was a discrepancy between their numbers and that of the rangefinder. He also noted that a player wants to know the distance his ball should land, not necessarily the hole number.
There are also other factors when it comes to pace of play, such as field size, course conditions and player routine.
“I think it will make a marginal difference,” said Brennan Little, caddy of 2019 U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland. “At the PGA Championship, the pace of play is still going to be slow. Anytime you have 156 players in (major championship) conditions, they’re not going to move quickly. When you have pairs (on the weekend), it would be a different story.”
Francesco Molinari’s caddy, veteran Mark Fulcher, said that while using rangefinders probably makes sense, they will only lengthen the time it takes to make a decision and that he finds it all “a bit pointless.”
There are also other points to consider.
Although the cadets surveyed almost all agreed that the use of lasers would not help improve the pace of play, they were more divided on the fact that the devices take away some of the cadet’s skills.
“Anyone can pull up a flag and know without a doubt what the number is,” said longtime cadet Kip Henley. “Cadets and players (fake) numbers all the time and especially when they’re trying to win. Cadets who handle pressure and players who can calm their brains have a little advantage over the course of a year by not missing numbers or gauging them from far away (the fairway) where they can’t get accurate distances and guessing comes into play.”
Perhaps the most striking example in recent years was the final round of the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, where Jordan Spieth hit his tee shot about 100 yards to the right of the fairway on the 13th hole, took a memorable fall on the driving range, made only one bogey and won the pitcher of claret.
“Thirty cadets would have had 30 different numbers on that shot,” Henley said.
Tesori went further: “I think it rewards cadets who didn’t do their homework.”
If the use of rangefinders will be limited to the PGA Championship, the Women’s PGA and the Senior PGA, we can also wonder if they will one day be authorized in all events on the different circuits. Currently, they are permitted at the NCAA level and USGA Amateur Championships as well as Monday qualifying and practice rounds on tour.
Many caddies object to the use of DMDs beyond this.
“There have been rumors for years that rangefinders would become legal on tour,” Tesori said. “I’m for them in events where it’s not mandatory to have a caddy – US Amateur, NCAA, Monday qualifiers – but for a professional event I’m totally against it.”
Matt Kelly, Marc Leishman’s caddy, feels the same way and said he probably wouldn’t use a rangefinder often and would probably only do so if his player was well out of the fairway.
“I’m not a big fan of that decision,” he said. “It slows things down, if anything. I don’t see the tour adopting them either because it doesn’t look professional on TV and I don’t think the tour wants that.”
